Manufacturing a "victory" in Afghanistan

Manufacturing a "victory" in Afghanistan

David Whitehouse looks at the truth behind U.S. claims of a success in Afghanistan.

February 22, 2010

U.S. OFFICIALS scored a propaganda victory with operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan that were universally hailed by the mainstream media as signs of real progress in Washington's war against the Taliban.

But beneath the charades and the celebrating, none of the war's basic features have changed. The Afghan revolt against the U.S. occupation has spread more widely than ever, and Western tactics of counterinsurgency, along with the brutality and corruption of President Hamid Karzai's government, are stoking further discontent.

A case in point was the slaughter of 12 Afghan civilians--five of them children--by two rockets fired by a U.S. artillery system on February 14 during the U.S.-led assault on Marja, a town in western Helmand province described as a "Taliban stronghold."

But the U.S. media were less interested in the latest killing of innocents by American forces than the announcement of the capture of the Taliban's top military commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Pakistan's port city of Karachi. This arrest was followed by the apprehension of two Taliban provincial "shadow governors" in the same city.

In Afghanistan, the Marja assault is intended to demonstrate that additional U.S. troops can make some kind of difference in Afghanistan. There was never any doubt about whether the offensive would succeed militarily, as 15,000 heavily armed U.S., British, Canadian and Afghan soldiers were battling a lightly armed Taliban force estimated by U.S. officials to number only 400 by the time the assault began.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/22/manufacturing-a-victory

Nahhhh.... :sarcasm:

they were then. At this rate it will go on forever.

How can we get out if we don't claim victory?

n/t

There is no way Big media and the MIC will let a Dem win a war.